The King of Fighters '95Review

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A classic fighter brought down by the issue of value.

By Lucas M. Thomas

I think SNK shot itself in the foot where this one's concerned. The King of Fighters '95 is a classic head-to-head fighting game from the Neo Geo, the second installment in SNK's signature series. It's an undeniably strong franchise, as it's still going with new sequels to this day -- The King of Fighters XIII is coming out in Japan this week, and fan support both there and here in America is still very solid. With that established audience in place and waiting patiently for the domestic arrival of the series' next edition, you'd think it'd be a good call to release this older one -- one of the classics -- to help tide them over. But I don't think so. I think the company shot itself in the foot.

That's because The King of Fighters Collection: The Orochi Saga, a compilation disc that collected this game, its immediate predecessor and its three direct sequels, already shipped in physical form a year and a half before '95 popped up for download in the Wii Shop. You could stroll over to any neighborhood game store and find a used copy for about 10 bucks, I'd wager, giving yourself access to King of Fighters '94, '95, '96, '97 and '98 all at once -- which would be much more worthwhile than spending nine to purchase '95 alone.

Collection discs frequently provide excellent value for consumers. But, in their wake, the value for each individual game they collect can often be diminished -- and I think that's what's happened here. It's just hard to justify the cash for this latecoming Virtual Console version when you could get the same game, plus four more, for just about the same expense.

Ninjas rule, even fighting in broad daylight down at the docks.

Value argument aside for a while, let's examine the game itself. The King of Fighters '95 kicked off a long line of yearly sequels to the original KoF concept from 1994 -- it introduced new gameplay revisions and new characters, as well as the idea that once-a-year updates could work for something other than major league sports franchises. After the example set here, KoF went on to have a new game once a year, every year, until 2003.

One key issue that '95 addressed was mixing and matching in your team of three. King of Fighters' standard set-up is a three-on-three battle of brawlers, where each individual gets one life bar -- and if he gets knocked out, he's out for good and replaced by the next teammate in line. If all three fall, the battle's lost. It was an interesting twist on character selection when first seen in the '94 game, but it was also restrictive. Every character was pre-assigned to a team of three, and you were forced to use those existing trios -- so if you wanted Terry Bogard, you were getting Andy and Joe along with him, whether you liked it or not.

'95 lets you mix and match, pairing Terry with Iori and Billy Kane if you want, or any other combination you can dream up. It seems minor, but it functionally multiplied the character select screen exponentially.

The King of Fighters '95 also amped up the overall difficulty considerably, addressing concerns that the computer's A.I. in '94 was weak. No one could make that same comment here, though, as even when you ratchet down the difficulty selector to its lowest "Beginner" level, you can very well still have the snot kicked out of you. It may even be too hard, comparatively -- introducing a new issue after addressing an old.

And that's pretty much that. The rest is as you'd expect -- SNK boldly challenged Capcom to claim command of the fighting genre in the '90s, and King of Fighters '95 is still incredibly fluid, entertaining and playable today. It holds up well here on the Wii, and it can still facilitate intense one-on-one matches against your friends just as well as it first did 15 years ago.

The Verdict

So the bottom line all comes back to the value argument. Even though this is still a great fighter and a good option for those looking for a genre fix -- especially those waiting patiently for the American arrival of The King of Fighters XIII -- it's just too difficult to recommend as an individual nine-dollar download when just a bit more cash and some light legwork to go walk into a game shop somewhere could score you the same game, and more. Had SNK released this one earlier in the Wii's life span, or had they not marketed the Orochi Saga compilation disc, the verdict might have been different here. But, as it is, it's a skip.